Pastor: What Will be on Your Tombstone?

As I journeyed home from Zambia, Jim and I had a quick stop in England once again for a shower, bed and fellowship with the Walkers. As Jim and I spent time with our dear friends and fellow pastors, Austin and Jeremy Walker, I began to remember previous trips to visit them, and all I learned from them about the faithful English pastors of old.

One of the most impacting historical tours they took me on was to the Bunhill Fields Cemetery, just outside the city of London. This cemetery is just outside the city limits because these graves are marked as dissenters (NonConformists), those who would not submit to the corrupt religious authority of their day.

Yet, in this cemetery you will find some of the most faithful pastors who proclaimed the gospel amidst trying days.

Men like John Bunyan, John Owen and Issac Watts, all have graves marked in this legendary resting place. Seeing their famous graves is not what impacted me the most. It was seeing the grave of a lesser known pastor named Joseph Hart.

I was so deeply impacted by the inscription on his grave that was uniquely different from so many others.

Joseph Hart’s grave stone reads as follows:

Joseph Hart was by the free and sovereign Grace and Spirit of God raised up from the depths of sin, and delivered from the bonds of mere profession and self-righteousness, and led to rest entirely for salvation in the finished atonement and perfect obedience of Christ.

Pastors, Joseph Hart’s grave captures the essence of who we are in Christ and why we have given ourselves to pastoral ministry.

It is not for the praise of men, the earthly rewards we might receive, nor the fame and notoriety many a popular preacher gets, especially in our culture today.

We labor, die a little every day, and give ourselves to this labor of love because we, “by the free and sovereign grace and Spirit of God were raised up from the depths of sin and led to rest entirely for salvation in the finished atonement and perfect obedience of Christ.”

Dear brothers and fellow pastors, do not lost sight of for whom and what we labor to preach Christ and shepherd his people.

Begin now to consider how you wish to be remembered.

Will you want a tombstone like John Wesley (just outside Bunhill Fields) and so many others with monuments and flowery words that articulate all you accomplished for Christ? Or, will you wish to be forgotten if it means that Christ would not be to future generations?

Brian Croft

Brian Croft is senior pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also the author of "Visit the Sick: Ministering God’s Grace in Times of Illness (foreword by Mark Dever) and "Test, Train, Affirm, and Send Into Ministry: Recovering the Local Church’s Responsibility to the External Call" (foreword by R. Albert Mohler Jr.). Brian blogs regularly at Practical Shepherding.